


pastimes

by CannibalisticDuck



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Drunken Shenanigans, Excessive Theatrics, M/M, One Night Stands, One-Sided Relationship, Pining, Pre-Episode: s01e06 Rare Species, Roach Has the Brain Cell (The Witcher), Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:00:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28014315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CannibalisticDuck/pseuds/CannibalisticDuck
Summary: Jaskier knows how Geralt resents him well before he loses control atop the mountain.  It'd been festering for years.  He just hoped Geralt might ignore it, and he could slink away with his pride over the winter.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 4
Kudos: 56





	1. dear, sweet, maudlin

Chireadan manages to drag him from the window, and Jaskier laughs aloud at the sheer absurdity of the afternoon. Geralt manages to survive a fall from the mayor’s topmost floor, and that insane witch manages to land directly atop his cock.

Brilliant.

Jaskier takes inventory of himself. His throat is blessedly clear, and he realizes in that exact moment: he needs a drink.

Chireadan seems to have dropped his elbow in favor of manfully curling in on himself along the same fencepost where Geralt had tethered Roach. Jaskier’s scalp twinges in sympathy as he distractedly takes in his white knuckles threaded through his mussed hair.

“While I’m wholly in support of this undoubtedly earth-shattering revelation you’re taking in,” Jaskier says as he carefully places himself in Roach’s line of sight, “I’d have to warn you against this particular setting. This absolute cow”—he holds his hands out placatingly as Roach’s ears twitch menacingly at his approach—“bites for the simple pleasure of rending a scream from those whose bottomless generosity compels them to feed her oats _against their better judgment_.”

Chireadan shoots an annoyed glance at Jaskier as he quickly rifles through Geralt’s stores to find that fat coin purse he’d been eyeing since he first found the pair haplessly fishing at the lake’s edge. He hums cheerily as he sidesteps Roach’s halfhearted nip. She’s much too busy nosing at whatever sweetgrass some passing traveler had scattered for their horse previously.

“Oh,” he coos, waving the purse before the elf as he squints down the road. “No need to look so sour. You can mope just as furtively over a tankard of ale as you are right now, soaking horse shit into your uniform. That’s actually—that’s disgusting. Get up. Come along.”

Chireadan clambers to his feet and brushes his backside with a conspicuous grimace. Against all odds, he looks even more morose. He sulks and shuffles next to Jaskier as he holds the coin purse like a divining rod.

“Excellent!” He throws his free arm around the elf and steers him in a wide arc around Roach’s hindlegs. “Now, my dear, sweet, maudlin elf, where might we go to get breathtakingly drunk?”

Hours later, Jaskier clings tightly to Chireadan’s shoulder pad with his right arm and some other hapless, drunk villager with he other as this whole mob he’s managed to whip into being with a strum of his lute and a few gallons of ale knocks into the pub’s tables and chairs.

“Some be lewd!” he sings manically.

“Some be shrewd!” they roar back.

Together, they all boom, “Go where they go!”

The circle of villagers collapses into overturned chairs and creaking booths. Chireadan clanks his tankard clumsily into Jaskier’s, and the ales’ froth sloshes onto their already sticky hands.

“Women,” he says loftily.

“Wo _men_ ,” he slurs.

Chireadan nods sagely and takes a long pull, ale dribbling in twin rivulets down his chin. Jaskier lets his knee gently knock into his drinking partner. With a dopy smile, the elf leans further into the bard’s space. Jaskier basks in the stupor brought on by good drink and good company.

Good company.

He frowns at a notch in the bar top.

He’d been fine without Geralt for two years. He’d spent long nights whirling through taverns and courts alike, lute strings plucking loudly beneath his deft fingers and smiles haphazardly catapulted his direction. He’d bedded plenty of strangers, kissed even more. This was the life he dreamed of when he’d shed that stifling title and that stagnant estate.

He presses his thumb into the divot, grinning when the pad slots neatly into the wood.

There, fixed.

He was his own good company. Always had been.

He didn’t need that witcher who thanked beautiful women for their life-saving services with a full-body _service_.

“Chire!” he says suddenly.

Chireadan chokes on his ale with a giggle, eyelashes fluttering over the lip of his tankard. Jaskier blinks slowly. He hadn’t realized how close they’d come. He basks in that familiar balm of feeling wanted.

“Chirea—” he hiccups, finesses two fresh ales from the barkeep with far more poise than he has any right to possess considering how the world spins in his periphery. “Aidan! Let’s step outside.”

The elf grins, and the two manage to stumble out the tavern. Geralt’s coin purse jingles lightly as the remaining three coins rattle with every misstep. Jaskier isn’t sure where they’re going, but Chireadan’s steps are decidedly surer than his own. Time blurs, and they somehow find their way to the elf’s encampment.

Despite the darkness, the night’s still young. Chireadan’s company must still be reveling in Rinde’s alcohol stores. They couldn’t have left long before. The central firepit still burns brightly. There’s a lingering smell of roasted game caught up in the woodsmoke.

The elf and bard wordlessly share their last drinks of ale, leaning bonelessly against the trees beside Chireadan’s tent.

Jaskier melts into the tree at his back, his face warmed by the fire—not as good as the ones Geralt coaxed from those ash logs nearly a year ago—fingers numb as he held the cool cup of ale.

He realizes with a jolt that Chireadan is slumping into a contented, drunk sleep against his own trunk, and Jaskier wracks his addled mind for a new conversation—anything to stave off that loneliness he’s sure to feel when he remembers his drinking partner is some strange elf and not some admittedly stranger witcher.

“So…” he croons. Chireadan’s eyes snap into focus. “Healing?”

“Healing,” Chireadan affirms.

“Pardon my”—he throws his arm out theatrically—“limited experience with your practice. But you”—a hiccup and a giggle—“are absolute _shit_.”

With a tired laugh, Chireadan lunges across Jaskier with a playful jab. Jaskier leans into the sudden closeness, smiling dopily as he catalogs Chireadan has quite nice eyes.

Chireadan clumsily sinks to his arse, staring delightedly into the fire while reaching an unabashed hand to mark the dips and rises of muscle in Jaskier’s calf.

Jaskier takes a long pull of ale.

“I can assure you I’m quite good. It’s just those damned magical hurts I can’t treat.”

Chireadan’s fingers pause at Jaskier’s pant cuff and curl into a distracting grip of his hem.

Jaskier grins and presses his head back into the rough bark. He was most definitely getting lucky tonight. Luckier than that violet-eyed, orgy-loving, old witch whose legs were most _definitely_ wrapped about Geralt’s waist at this very second. Jaskier thumps his head against the trunk once more.

“You think you could teach me?” he asks lowly.

“Bard,” Chireadan’s hand creeps from his and past his knee in a slow drag of warmth, “I’d hardly take you as some blushing virg—”

Jaskier tightly shuts his eyes, ignoring that tempting coil of interest stirring in his stomach. He gesticulates helplessly, a huff escaping his lips as he pushes off the tree trunk. Chireadan’s hand falls unceremoniously from his thigh, and he sluggishly looks up at Jaskier with a question half-formed on his lips.

It’d be so easy to tumble into the leaves, lose himself to ale and to touch.

But Geralt will grow tired of that hag soon enough, that itch to rejoin the Path never allowing him to stay in a backwater village long. But Jaskier can’t afford to be cast aside, again. He must make himself indispensable. An asset to the Path.

“Healing. Would you teach me healing?”

The fire is dying. He should’ve filched a couple logs from the woodpile just outside the encampment.

“I just—He doesn’t take care of himself, except for downing some disgusting potion that looks suspiciously like bog water, and I’m almost certain it _is_ bog water, actually. Hell of a placebo effect, if you ask me.”

Chireadan stares confusedly back, head angled in a way that suggests the ale has given his neck leave to wobble as if anchored in a lazy stream. Jaskier’s rambling. He knows, but this request is cumbersome with its implications.

“He’s just so insistent that he’ll heal by morning, and I know he does. I travelled with him a good two months before he left, and if I stayed up long enough, I could watch gashes in his cheek knit back together. But all that blood.” His hand unconsciously swipes at his mouth. “And he looks—he looks so tense all the time! I don’t think he lets anyone touch him unless he’s fighting or fucking. And—you know—I could accept that if I hadn’t followed that bastard to the bath and washed his hair and his shoulders hadn’t—hadn’t—” What was the word? “—relaxed? Unfurled? Oh, fuck, you know what I mean, Chire, for the first time.”

Jaskier sat with a massive sigh. He hooked his leg to Chireadan’s and stared dejectedly at the blur of twigs beneath him.

“Maybe if you can teach me a little about healing, I can have more of an excuse to touch him.”

Chireadan disentangled himself from Jaskier’s loose contact and crawled into the space between Jaskier’s legs, bracing his arms at either side of his head. Carefully, he traced his hand down Jaskier’s hairline and curled his fingers into the fine hairs at the back of his neck.

“I’ll teach you,” he whispered.


	2. sleepless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Should I be working on exams? Perhaps. Did I write this chapter as a form of productive procrastination? The world will never know.

After ten tankards of ale, Jaskier’s shit at anything that doesn’t involve coaxing out sounds with his clever fingers.

Luckily, this talent extends to intimate entanglements, and Chireadan is more than happy to keep his promise the next afternoon. And the afternoon after that. And the afternoon after that.

A typical lesson goes as such:

First, a village idiot comes stumbling through the brush, his whole family in tow. But that’s hardly noticeable as the village idiot has one of three things protruding from his body: a stray arrow meant for a hapless squirrel, a cluster of porcupine needles which had not been ejected by the porcupine herself or a rusted nail, for those less interesting.

Second, Chireadan rushes them into his tent and assures the village idiot and talks out of his ass about his superior medical training from his apprenticeship in Rinde. Jaskier has touted his own Oxenfurt education at plenty enough bars to know Chireadan is angling to justify an absurd fee after pulling the village idiot from the brink of death.

Third, Chireadan shoos the village idiot’s family outside and beckons Jaskier closer with an absent wave of the hand. He examines the wound, instructs Jaskier to strip the village idiot and hold down his thrashing body, and yanks whatever offending protrusion might be giving the village idiot trouble.

Fourth, Chireadan unstops whatever potion he’s set his fancy on and lets Jaskier have a sniff. More often than not, it smells suspiciously like mead. Jaskier nods sagely, agreeing wordlessly with Chireadan’s diagnosis. The elf shoots a smile in his direction that makes Jaskier immediately think of other ways he can spike Chireadan’s adrenaline which don’t include a wailing village idiot between the two of them.

Fifth, Chireadan rips out whatever is jutting out the village idiot. Jaskier throws all his weight into holding down the village idiot, and Chireadan liberally dumps his potion directly onto the wound. The village idiot usually passes out by this point, and Jaskier sits back on his ankles with a witty comment.

Sixth, Chireadan hands Jaskier a threaded needle and instructs him to don the village idiot as he would a hole in a sock. Jaskier does so with a flourish as Chireadan waltzes outside to inform the shrieking family that they were wise to bring their idiot to his tent. He was near death, you know.

Overall, Jaskier feels he is becoming somewhat proficient in first aid.

Geralt remains indisposed for the rest of the week. Either the harpy has formidable stamina, or his own idiot is the most willing hostage Jaskier’s ever had the misfortune to admire. Jaskier has decided he doesn’t care.

But he still asks the elf to teach him the basics.

The days drag on, and between visits from mutilated villagers and horizontal, vertical and sideways moments in the tent, Jaskier finds his thoughts wandering to the mayor’s crumbled manor. From the far-off look in Chireadan’s eyes, his do the same.

They’re hardly in love, and that’s why they stay together.

In typical Geralt fashion, Jaskier is poked awake at some ungodly hour scarcely twenty minutes until sunrise. Eyes resolutely shut, he swats drowsily at whatever thing has deigned to disturb him.

“G’way.”

“Jaskier.”

Jaskier’s eyes snap open, and he rolls annoyedly from Chireadan’s sleep-warm back.

“Geralt,” he slurs. “So nice of you to check on my recovery. As you may well see—and possibly smell, I have to ask you more about that—I am currently enrolled in an aggressive treatment program. And you, unfortunately, are visiting me outside designated visiting hou— _ow, ow, ow_. Ow!”

Chireadan shifts, and he continues to sleep like the dead. Bastard.

“Let go of my ear! What? What do you want?”

“We’re leaving.”

“Are you on some new sleep schedule? Because I have to say, this does not work for me.”

“I’ll wait outside.”

“Oh,” he says sarcastically, rolling out the pile of blankets. “Sure, I’ll be right there. Just because you didn’t—” Geralt slips through the tent flap. Jaskier knows he can still hear him. “—have a good lay last night doesn’t mean you have to punish me. Who did. You know, have a good lay. A couple times, actually. And he’s still sleeping! As I would like to be. The things I do for you, witcher, honestly.”

Jaskier finishes shrugging on his doublet and casts his eyes about the tent. Chireadan wouldn’t mind a few missing supplies considering the work he’d put in last night.

Jaskier swipes a few tinctures of mead, and he takes another for a quick morning pick-me-up. He can feel its healing properties activate immediately.

The world is cast in blue-gray when he stomps outside, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He runs directly into a wall of horsehair and saddle tack.

“Ah, good morning Roach. Glad to see you didn’t waste away during that bout of marathon sex.”

Geralt grunts disapprovingly from atop his mare, and Roach lurches forward into her typical walking pace. It’s been years since they’d last travelled together, but Jaskier matches her pace as if no time passed at all.

They walk for an hour, and Jaskier strums his lute lazily with every jaw-cracking yawn. The world bleeds into the warmer blues and oranges of sunrise. Roach plows on.

Jaskier grows bored of walking along silently and moves to start walking at Geralt’s side.

“Pardon my asking, Geralt. But where are we going?”

With a suffering sigh, Geralt answers, “South.”

A response. Excellent.

“What’s south, dear witcher? Adventure? Terror? Heroics?”

“Coin, probably.”

“Ah! How could I have forgotten the pull of wealth? Foolish of me to ignore its allure. Perhaps you’d like to tell me what monster is in season?”

Roach grunts with annoyance and inches forward nearly a pace ahead of Jaskier. Evidently, Geralt has reached his morning limit for conversation. Far be it from Jaskier to simply disappear into the landscape.

“I suppose you’d hardly be interested in what I did between our last meeting and my short stay at the mayor’s orgy house, but I think you might congratulate me on how I entertained myself this past week while you were, let’s say, unreachable.”

Geralt’s hands reach in front of him to stretch. That’s as good an invitation to keep talking as anything.

“I apprenticed myself to Chireadan, and I—”

“Interesting apprenticeship,” Geralt interrupts. “Were you trying to absorb knowledge through skin-to-skin contact?”

“Aren’t you a comedian this morning. And judging by those circles under your eyes, I’d venture to say the djinn never granted your intended wish. What a pity. From the way you keep shifting in your saddle, I might venture a guess you found other ways to wile away those dark hours this past week. An apprenticeship of your own, perhaps?”

Roach pulls ahead, again, looking mutinous at whomever is goading her on.

“What?” he calls plaintively. “I’m not allowed to ask if you’re finally well-rested?”

Geralt is staring resolutely forward, not even awarding his attempts at humor with a well-timed grunt. Something bitter sours his tongue.

“People have been known to kill for it, you know.”

At that, Roach comes to an abrupt stop. Geralt’s hands are tense on the reins, and his stare isn’t so occupied with a single, far-off pinprick of dust.

“I—” he says haltingly. “We’re going south. Drowner season.”

Jaskier blinks at Geralt. As far as apologies go, it’s probably one of his most sincere.

“Hm,” Jaskier grunts softly. “I could probably make a few songs of that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll update again by next Friday! I promise it'll pick up.
> 
> What do you guys think about how I'm writing Jaskier's perspective and dialogue in this chapter? I'm not sure how accurate to the show I'm being.

**Author's Note:**

> Per usual, it's finals week, and I'm finding any excuse to procrastinate. I'll update next Friday.  
> Also, I lifted the lyrics from a "bawdy" medieval song about women. Figured it might fit the mood.  
> http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/medlyric/women.php


End file.
